A Line Above the Sky: On Mountains and Motherhood

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A highly-acclaimed future classic of climbing, memoir and nature writing, for readers of H is for Hawk and The Outrun. Guardian Books to Watch 2022 Evening Standard Books to Watch 2022 Bookseller Editor's Choice Winner of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 'A wonderful book - exhilarating and taut, fearless in its explorations of wildness, risk, motherhood, and the inner and outer worlds of the writer' Jon McGregor 'This book is beautiful' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Climbing gives you the illusion of being in control, just for a while, the tantalising sense of being able to stay one move ahead of death' As a child, Helen Mort was drawn to the thrill and risk of climbing, the tension between human and rockface, and the climber's need to be hyperaware of the sensory world - to feel the texture of rock under their fingers, how their crampons bite into the ice, the subtle shifts in weather. But when she becomes a mother for the first time, she finds herself re-examining this most elemental of disciplines, and the way that we view women who put themselves in danger. Written by one of Britain's most talented young writers, A Line Above the Sky melds memoir and nature writing to create what will surely become a classic of the genre; it asks why humans are compelled to climb and poses other, deeper questions about self, motherhood and freedom. It is a love letter to losing oneself in physicality, whether that in the risk of climbing a granite wall solo, without ropes, or the intensity of bringing a child into the world.

Reviews

A gorgeous memoir all about the great outdoors and the impulse to go to our limits * Evening Standard *
Strong stuff, satisfying and intriguing to read * Sarah Moss *
A candid and moving exploration of early motherhood...the writing is beautifully lyrical * The I *
This is a book of the seen and unseen; on being alive; on being wild; on being a woman. This book is about being a woman - both seen and unseen - alive and wild - in a world that needs new words for every single part of this. And my oh my, how Mort writes those new words. * Caught By the River *
An intimate take on motherhood and self-dissolution, and the way mountains can come to fill the voids of a life. * Economist *

Author Bio

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985, and grew up in nearby Chesterfield. Five times winner of the Foyle Young Poets Award, she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer Prize in 2008. Her first collection, Division Street (2013), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Costa Poetry Award, and won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. In 2014, she was named as a 'Next Generation Poet', the prestigious accolade announced only once every ten years, recognising the 20 most exciting new poets from the UK and Ireland. No Map Could Show Them (2016), her second collection, about women and mountaineering, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Helen has been the Wordsworth Trust Poet in Residence and the Derbyshire Poet Laureate and was named one of the RSL's 40 under 40 Fellows in 2018. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Sheffield. Black Car Burning was her first novel, and A Line Above the Sky is her first work of narrative memoir.